Peter Bowker's Occupation deals brilliantly with the complex and grim realities of the conflict in Iraq: the war as a business opportunity, the shocking lack of post-war planning and the corruption that filled the vacuum, the realities of enacting big political decisions on the ground.

Yet much of its brilliance lies in its depiction of three individual soldiers and the relationships between them: how one incident affects them differently, and the cost to each of them of participating in the war.

Occupation is as much a detailed portrait of three characters – played brilliantly by James Nesbitt, Stephen Graham and Warren Brown – as it is a grand panorama of the theatre of war. It's rare, seemingly rarer with every passing day, that I thoroughly recommend something, but Occupation is one of those things.

"What I'm fascinated with," says Bowker, "is that moment when people walk back into their domestic setting and feel that, either because of what they've seen or what they've done, they can't share it and therefore no longer fit."

Certainly Nesbitt's Mike Swift, whose rescue of an injured Iraqi girl initiates the events that will change all three men, is fascinating, nuanced and award-worthy. On returning home, there's a wonderful scene in which he walks into a silent house, into the kitchen and boils the kettle. That's all that happens, but it speaks volumes about a man out of place in his own home. "Something's shifted in these characters and, in the case of Mike, he ceases to be emotionally honest with his family from the moment he gets home."

Equally, with Stephen Graham's Danny Peterson, you have a character who has nothing in his life but the army and the adrenaline it surges through his veins. A man who arguably never had a place, Danny seeks meaning where he can find it and Graham brings a dangerous pain to the part. Bowker calls him "one of those actors who carries and communicates a lot of pain", and he is undoubtedly one to watch. After an electrifying turn in This Is England and now Occupation, he'll next play Al Capone in Martin Scorsese's Boardwalk Empire for HBO. I liked him in The Innocence Project (though I suspect I'm the only one).

Meanwhile, Brown's Lee Hibbs is fulfilling his father's military fantasies by joining the army. There's a telling scene when, in his parents' living room, he, Danny and Mike hug. His dad sighs, "All comrades together ... ". Not only can you sense regret from Hibbs senior that he was never a soldier, but there's also a subtle sorrow; these men are closer to his son than he will ever be.

"I like writing about the kind of boys and men I grew up with, trying to articulate profound experiences, and the gap between what they can articulate and what's happening to them," says Bowker. "That's what stimulates me. It's what drove me with Flesh and Blood and Blackpool."

Certainly, Bowker's unerring and honest focus on such detail is the mark of a fine dramatist – and without a doubt, he is one of Britain's best. This year, he has three projects in the offing. As well as Occupation, his version of Wuthering Heights is on ITV1, while Desperate Romantics, a six-part series about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood starring Rafe Spall, Samuel Barnett and Tom Hollander, is on BBC2 in July.

Occupation could be seen as part of an oeuvre of dramas inspired by the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, sitting alongside Generation Kill, Steven Bochco's Over There, Tony Marchant's The Mark of Cain, Alex Holmes and Stephen Butchard's House of Saddam, and Lizzie Mickery and Daniel Percival's The State Within.

Bowker says that while the amount of information about the war was overwhelming – from documentaries to 24-hour news – his interest lay in the human stories. "I spoke to Combat Stress, who counsel ex-servicemen, and they told me that soldiers who served in the second world war would turn up in the last decade and talk about something they'd seen or done in that conflict. They'd held it inside until their wives had died and could now reveal it, since it couldn't do anyone any damage. That level of emotional denial is gold dust in terms of where you can go as a drama." Indeed.

• Occupation starts on BBC1 at 9pm on Tuesday 16 June.

In other, entirely unrelated news, this is my last blogpost for the Guardian. I am off to join the circus / retrain as a social worker / get married and have babies / have a midlife crisis / retire to Thailand to open a bar. The last nearly nine years have been, if not always a joy and never a chore, then certainly rewarding work. Mostly. Blogging has been among the funnest work I've done. And I couldn't have done it without you. Well, that's not technically true but your contributions have made it more, erm, interesting. Yes, even the rude stuff. So, cheers big ears. Good night and good luck.